


The Pact

by Avrina



Series: The Gift of Twilight [1]
Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Blood Pacts, Developing Friendships, F/M, Family, Loss, Murder, Underworld, Vampire Bites, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:35:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25225438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avrina/pseuds/Avrina
Summary: A teenage girl. A werewolf. A vampire.A murdered sister. A missing nephew. An old debt.A pact not made entirely voluntarily.And a city trip in the underworld...
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: The Gift of Twilight [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827535





	The Pact

**Author's Note:**

> I had the original idea to this ten years ago, when everyone was going crazy for "Twilight" - I really don't like this stuff- and this is the rewritten form. So no, there's no fluffy glittering vampire with love-story hiding behind this one...

The fine cool breeze that Julie felt on her bare feet as she passed Christine's closed room door was nothing unusual. The faint metallic smell of blood certainly _was_. In the middle of her walk she paused and frowned, her nostrils twitching.

"Good morning... what's wrong?" Thomas, already showered and dressed, came out of the bathroom carrying a cloud of warm, moist air with him. At the sight of Julie, he frowned too.

"Smell that?" she wanted to know quietly; her senses were more pronounced than those of a normal human, though not as strong as those of a werewolf or a vampire.

Her father's frown deepened and he came towards her the few steps through the corridor. "Blood...?" As a professor of anatomy and physiology who regularly performed live partial sections and had worked in hospital pathology for years, the smell was familiar to him.

Julie nodded thoughtfully. She turned her head halfway to the side and looked at Christine's white room door. It was indescribable, but Thomas seemed to feel it too, for he hesitated - as did she, but finally she raised her hand and knocked.

"Christine? Hey, are you awake yet?" She knocked again. "Hey, we were gonna go see Grandma..."

There was no reaction. Not even the annoyed sigh that Christine had mastered so well since a while came through the door.

"Christine?" Now it was Thomas who knocked - a little more forcefully and quickly.

"What's the matter, my goodness..." Hannah was heard and came out of the kitchen into the corridor. She was still wearing her pajamas, her almost black curls were still a wild mess, and when she saw her husband and daughter, she too put on a frown.

"Christine," Thomas said loud and clear. Julie, who had stood halfway under her father's outstretched arm, stepped aside a little; the strange feeling grew stronger. Thomas pushed the handle and opened the door. "Chris... oh! What...? What..."

"Tommy? What's wrong?"

During Hannah's worried question, Julie pushed past her father again and her mouth formed a silent _oh_.

The white frame of Christine's bed was covered with blood and on the light-colored bedside rug was a puddle of blood.

As it was rather dim thanks to the drawn curtains, Julie felt for the light switch and when she pressed it, something inside her crumbled.   
Christine smiled. The blanket was neatly pulled over her like a loving parent would do, but covered in blood. And there was a barely noticeable glimmer in the air.

Julie squinted her eyes, completely ignoring what her parents were saying or doing, and watched the twinkling. It was the spoor of a vampire, an abstract visual representation, comparable to the unmistakable scent of a werewolf, which had stuck to the victim. There were no real words for what Julie saw, there were vague geometric shapes, wave patterns, interlocking splashes of color...

Although she had only stumbled upon this hidden side of the world two years ago, it was now almost normal for her to save and analyze the spoor.   
A vampire... male... over two hundred years old in any case, but certainly younger than five hundred... usually well controlled...

"Julie?" Thomas' soft voice, his heavy hand on her shoulder, tore her from her thought. She probably looked as if she was in shock.

"Yes?" She blinked at him. His narrow face was incredibly pale.

"Come on, Mom's making coffee." His face was not only pale, it was rigid, his eyes grew strangely large as he spoke. "We must wait until the police arrives..."

"Okay." She nodded and felt the corners of her mouth twitch in the hint of a smile, although tears were gathering in her eyes.

Her little sister... Christine... killed by a vampire...

Thomas walked strangely staggering into the kitchen where Hannah had disappeared before. Julie looked after him and then turned her eyes back to her sister's room.

Behind the heavy curtains, which moved slightly, the tilted window was visible. A vampire in bat form could easily enter, but for this ability he had to be not only old enough, but powerful enough. A seduction spell, which left a smile on Christine's lips, could be performed by any half vampire.

"Julie?" That was Hannah.

"Yes, Mom..." She turned away, suddenly shivering in her thin pajamas, and walked slowly down the corridor to the kitchen.

~

Since Julie couldn't concentrate enough to create a _door_ , she took a classic bus ride to the UCPD- the Underworld Concerning Police Department.

The pathologist from the Homicide Division called the UCPD almost immediately after he had excluded a sexual crime, and Alex showed up with his team - Yannik and Isabelle, the pathologist Doc Schmidt in tow. Of course, they pretended not to know Julie, but in reality, she was a kind of intern for the team.

When she had discovered that the people around her were not only humans, but also vampires, devils, demons and werewolves, she run into Alex in her rising panic - now he was a kind of mentor.

  
  


The bus stop was not far from the venerable brick building and Julie hurried along the sidewalk while the October wind tugged at her clothes and hair. There were a couple of smokers outside the front door, and she nodded at them just before she slipped inside. It smelled of old files and cold coffee, her sneakers squeaked on the floor as she headed for the stairs, because the elevator was - as so often - out of order.

On the fourth floor she knocked on the door of office 410 as a courtesy and entered while Alex was still calling his _"come in"_.

The conversation between Yannik and Isabelle stopped immediately and Alex sighed softly.

"You shouldn't be here and you know it."

Julie nodded slowly and stared at her shoe tips for a moment. "May I at least listen?" When Alex didn't answer, she raised her eyes again.

In his long narrow face lay compassion and finally his lips curled into a smile. "Sure. If you are as inconspicuous as a mouse." He made an inviting gesture.

"I'm really sorry...", Yannik then said quietly from the double desk under the window and Isabelle, opposite him, nodded in agreement, her platinum blond short braid hopping.

"Thank you," mumbled Julie and grabbed a rolling chair from a corner, which she pushed towards Alex.

"How are you feeling?" he wanted to know, while she hung her bag and jacket over the backrest.

"Empty," she replied slowly and sat down. "Are _empty_ and _nothing_ the same?"

Alex's blue eyes were like cold crystals. "I know you weren't very close to Christine." But his voice was warm and soft. "But she is still your little sister."

She nodded. "I know..."

He hesitated, then he turned to the computer and opened the case file, whose predefined scheme was still abundantly empty, but the close-up of the face from the pathology immediately caught the eye.

"How are your parents? When we left, they seemed so eerily quiet," Isabelle then wanted to know cautiously.

Julie shrugged. "I have no clue. I doubt my dad will ever really open up about his feelings." He was a very private man. "And my mom..." A second time she shrugged. "She didn't really want Christine." She couldn't bring herself to say that Hannah, a few years ago, while drunk, had told her that she had been about to go to an abortion clinic, but that summed up the relationship between Hannah and Christine.

There was an uneasy silence.

"Well, we're looking for a vampire," Yannik said after a moment and smiled tensely. "I don't think it would be too difficult with the spoor." That was a rather optimistic thought, but Yannik was like that. Spoors, auras and scents couldn't be put into databases like fingerprints.

"What about fingerprints?" Julie wanted to know. Alex opened the lab part of the file.

"No obvious ones. Bedding and body... um... are being examined." Embarrassed, he bit his lip, but Julie ignored the whole thing.

"What are the chances? In general, I mean?"

Isabelle, herself a half-vampire, sat back. "According to his spoor, he's a well-controlled vampire, so he's probably registered at the blood bank. But even if he is, it still leaves quite a lot of potential candidates, especially if we look not only at the city, but the surrounding area. Not to mention the state."

Julie nodded. Finding vampires with whom the blood thirst ran rampant was not easy, unless they murdered several times in a short time or made mistakes.

"You know what irritates me the whole time?" Alex then asked and leaned back, his screen now showing pictures from Christine's room.

"Hmm?" Yannik did and looked up.

"He covered her up neatly. But why? He did not take advantage of her."

"Father feelings? Maybe he has a daughter himself." Isabelle shrugged and Julie asked:

"Where did he bite her, anyway? At first glance, I didn't see a bite mark on her neck."

Alex clicked a couple of times and then raised his eyebrows. "Interesting question."

"Let me get this straight... there are no bite marks?" Yannik sounded irritated.

"That's impossible, Yannik," Isabelle replied with a sigh.

"Not necessarily, but we know Julie's family a little bit, so..." But Alex also broke off and Julie shrugged. Werewolves and vampires possessed a pronounced self-healing ability, but Julie's family consisted of normal humans. She herself was one, but blessed with the so-called _Gift of Twilight_ , which allowed her to move as a human in both worlds and gave her a kind of mediatory role.

"Why did he waste so much blood?" Julie then wanted to know and pointed to the large bloodstain on the bedside rug in one of the photos.

"Maybe he drank too much in his craving and it came back up." Isabelle replied soberly. "If he's used to the small portions at the blood bank, it's quite possible." But even if it was vomited blood, there was nothing you could do with it, Julie knew that.

"What do you think the probability is that it was a blood-bank vampire who for some reason lost control, covered the girl up out of guilt and therefore even turns himself in?" Alex asked Isabelle.

She pulled a thoughtful pout and then shook her head. "I doubt he'll turn himself in. Remember, he is no longer young and inexperienced, Alex, but several centuries old. It won't be the first time he's killed, only the last time was a long time ago."

With the few answers they had, the questions mostly went round and round, and at some point Alex said softly:

"Go home, Julie. Let the grief come."

She nodded and pursed her lips into a strained smile.

"We'll work it out," Yannik assured her with a smile and a nod.

She nodded back, took her jacket and bag and left the office. She felt so numb, so empty, so... paralyzed disbelief maybe, strong enough to not even let real tears fall.

~

The apartment door fell into the lock behind Julie, and directly in front of her, under the corridor wardrobe, stood her parents' packed travel bags. The family had wanted to go to Hannah's mother's house for the week of the autumn holidays.

There was no reaction to Julie coming home.

Slowly she walked over to her parents' tiny study - Thomas sat at the computer and seemed to be revising lectures.   
In the living room, Hannah was sitting on the couch, immersed in a book and an almost-eaten bar of chocolate on the coffee table. Had it not been for the police sticker on Christine's door, it could have been a perfectly normal evening. Christine was not even missing in this picture, for she spent most of her freetime in her room reading or drawing.

And the realization was not new, as Julie painfully had to admit. Six years of age difference had made sure that she had no real connection to Christine; especially in the last years she had always felt like an involuntary babysitter. That Hannah and Christine didn't get along was an old hat, and Thomas just worked a lot.

Was it normal? Would there ever be any grief or feelings of loss? Was this just the first shock paralysis, accompanied by the desire for normality, the "none of this ever happened"?

She didn't know.

But when she went into her room and closed the door behind her, booting up her computer and staring at the rain forest wallpaper on her screen, it felt like a normal evening.

And when she went to bed even later, without dinner and after only a fleeting, somehow disinterested greeting to her parents, the dull feeling that it wasn't normal but would stay this way came over her.

Like it never happened.


End file.
